116 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, [pt. u 



that I have a sensation without, for the moment, having my 

 attention specially occupied with that sensation. I cannot 

 know the external thing causing it, without, for the moment, 

 having my attention specially occupied with that external 

 thing. As either cognition rises, the other ceases." By the 

 " external thing," Mr. Spencer does not here mean the Ding 

 an sich, but the group of phenomena which are referred to 

 an existence outside of tlie organism. But we have already 

 seen that, when consciousness is so occupied with such a group 

 of phenomena that the result is the perception of an object, the 

 psychical act involved is an automatic classification of sundry 

 states of consciousness and of the relations between them, 

 according to their various likenesses and unlikenesses. Thus 

 we arrive at the distinction between sensation and percep- 

 tion. Impossible as it is to disentangle the two in practical 

 experience, analysis yet distinguishes the former as an ap- 

 parently elementary state of consciousness, while the latter 

 u " a discerning of the relations between states of conscious- 

 ness." According, therefore, as attention is directed chiefly 

 to a conscious feeling or to the relations between a number 

 of feelings, is now sensation and then perception predominant. 

 It remains to be observed that sensations, or — as we may 

 otherwise call them — feelings, are either peripherally or cen- 

 trally initiated. In other words, a feeling may either origi- 

 nate at the surface of the organism — as is the case with 

 sensations of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and in 

 the main with muscular and thermal sensations ; or it may 

 originate in the interior of the organism — as is the case with 

 the sensations of hunger and repletion, and with certain mus- 

 cular sensations, such as cramp ; or, again, it may start from 

 Bome group of nerve-centres, as is the case with those vague 

 feelings which accompany more or less complex acts of per- 

 ception and reasoning, and which, when they acquire a certain 

 degree of prominence, we call emotions. By the inclusion oi 

 these states of consciousness, the term *' feeling" covers » 



